Developer framework Sencha announced a major update to its platform last week that further enhances its HTML5 capabilities and provides easy wrappers to package Web applications into native form for Android and iOS. It is a bulky update to Sencha and is representative of how the tools of the mobile developer industry need to keep pace with innovation.
Sencha provides the entire horizontal stack capabilities that professional developers need to write, package, scale and wrap Web and native applications. If that sounds kind of like the hash browns at The Waffle House, it is. Sencha wants to place itself as the go-to framework for mobile commercial software development.
The two biggest upgrades to Sencha Touch 2 are the ability to access iOS and Android device APIs and take HTML5 Web application development and wrap it back into native packages. To a certain extent, this brings Sencha into PhoneGap territory with the ability to wrap applications for iOS and Android. Yet, Sencha is quick to point out that it is a completely different product than PhoneGap, providing an end-to-end capability that PhoneGap has no interest (currently) of providing the type of scaffolding support that Sencha does.
“We are providing what used to be enterprise grade tools to developers,” said Sencha CEO Michael Mullany. “Some of the same core concepts of BoltJS may have been inspired by what we have done with HTML5.”
Sencha wants to make Touch 2 a more approachable experience to both new and experienced developers. It has improved documentation to leverage its core class system. Android and iOS packaging can be done with one line of code and the APIs are available to support those systems. The idea is to bring the “code once, run anywhere” philosophy to true fruition. That is not quite a reality but HTML5 is moving mobile development in that direction and Sencha believes it has the tools that bring it closer than any other development framework.
What is the most effective framework to build HTML5? Do Sencha’s new tools give it a big advantage? Or are standard tools like jQuery Mobile still easier to deal with? Let us know in the comments.
Update — Sept. 19, 6:30 p.m. EST — Sorry for the confusion. Sencha has not “released” the beta of Sencha Touch 2 yet. They just announced it. The actual beta of Sencha Touch 2 will be available by the end of September, according to the company.
